Police, community hunting for L5P shooter

Terry Williams made the walk from the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club to his apartment a few blocks away on Seminole Avenue countless times. He was a regular at the popular blue-collar bar, and a former bartender there.

Shortly after midnight on May 22, Williams and an out-of-town guest left the bar to grab a six-pack at the gas station across the street, in the heart of Little Five Points, and head to Williams’ home, according to EAYC bartender Gino Hallidy. They were almost there when a man stopped to ask them for a light. Williams’ guest gave the man a lighter, and the man demanded cash, according to an Atlanta Police report. Before either Williams or his friend were able to comply, the man shot Williams once in the head.

Williams, who is in his late 30s, is listed in serious condition at Grady Memorial Hospital, according to Atlanta Police public affairs officer James Polite. Polite tells CL they do not yet have a suspect in the shooting.

The quirky, close-knit and typically tolerant Little Five Points neighborhood has been spared any high-profile crimes since 2002, when three street kids were charged with a hate crime for the savage, daytime beating of Idris Golden and his brother, Che. The attackers yelled racial slurs at the Goldens, who are black, while attacking them, witnesses said. The three later pleaded guilty.

Neighborhood activist Don Bender says he doesn’t believe the recent shooting indicates a trend: “It certainly is the most extreme thing that’s happened here in many years.”

Bender says the Little Five Points Community Association will be taking up donations in order to offer a reward for info on the shooter. (CL will update this blog as more info about both the reward and the shooter becomes available.)

In recent months, Hallidy hadn’t heard of much crime in the neighborhood, either.

But he says that from September 2006 to February 2007, at least a half dozen EAYC patrons and local employees, himself included, had been mugged in Little Five. EAYC employees had grown concerned enough to put up fliers in the bar and on the street warning about those attacks. “From where I’m standing now,” Hallidy told CL by phone, standing in front of the bar, “I can see four of them.”